Wednesday, July 23, 2008

God's Plan (V)

9:24 AM by Christi Bowman

God gives me direction, sometimes, in the form of ideas. He gives me an idea and I burn inside until it happens. The ideas He has given me sound like my own because, number one they are in my head, number two it sounds like my voice talking, and number three they are relevant to my life. I know they are His because, I know who I am. I know that I am incapable of coming up with this stuff by myself. I also know that I am not capable of carrying out these plans of His without Him.

He told me I needed to tell my mom about the abuse. I said "WHAT?"

I immediately began arguing with God. He knew my brother and I had tried before. No, I had never told her about the sexual abuse, but there had been many times my brother and I would start to talk about how mean and nasty they had both been to us while we were in there home. Every time my brother and I would start to have that conversation we were immediately shut down by an argument of "no, they loved you". I cannot explain to you why my brother and I could not push past that. I am sure it has something to do with what went on when we were kids. Whenever my mom would say that to us the conversation ended abruptly. We had no ability to take it any further. It was over.

I argued with God because I didn't see how this time would be any different. If anything I thought it would be more hurtful to me to have her shut me down this time because not only was I going to discuss the physical stuff, but I had the sexual abuse to talk about as well. I thought it would make her more angry and less likely to believe me because some of it was stuff she had never heard before. I was scared to bring this up. That is where faith comes in. When you know God has told you to do something, even if it seems painful and doesn't make a lot of sense to you, you have got to do it...even if the outcome is not pleasant.

I said above, that once God gives me an idea it burns until it is accomplished. I couldn't stop thinking about it. We have a social worker at our church who had worked in Christian counseling. She has helped me deal with a lot of this ugliness, so I called her about this once I couldn't argue it away myself. I thought for sure she would talk me out of it. She didn't. She said quite the opposite. She said "your ready." I was dumbfounded. Why hadn't she told me that I would eventually need to do this in the first place. I don't know, maybe when she reads this she can answer that. :)

She was out of town and by the time she got back I would be out of town. She told me to use that time as a time of journaling. I was to write down every thought that came to my mind regarding this. That exercise was AMAZING. I would go to write down a thought and I would finish with a novel. That happened MANY times over the course of the week. UGLY stuff came out on those pages. It was so ugly I cringed when I reread what I wrote. I HATED what was coming out. My counselor friend told me she would help me go back through my journal when I got back home, and help me put it all together in the form of a letter to my mom that I could read to her. I didn't think I could do that by myself. I asked Kevin, my friend, and then some other friends if they would sit in the room with me while I read the letter to her, so that when my mom started rejecting me I would have them to look at and keep me grounded in reality.

I went to Uplift. Uplift is a camp like atmosphere at a Christian college. I was surrounded by teenagers, and the only fellow adult I was traveling with was the youth minister from our church, a friend's husband. I had NO ONE to really talk to about all that was going on. I was alone. I felt alone. I questioned God's wisdom in all of this. At one point I even called Kevin and told him he would need to come get me. I was in Arkansas. We live in Illinois. Satan tried to take advantage of my doubt and tell me that the Christian thing to do would be to just know that I had forgiven her and let God deal with the rest. He made me wonder if bringing all this hurt out in the open was the right thing to do. I prayed about this, and asked God to make it abundantly obvious if this is what He wanted me to do. God gave me Isaiah 50:10&11

Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.

But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.

and Isaiah 52:11&12

Out of here! Out of here! Leave this place!
Don't look back. Don't contaminate yourselves with plunder.
Just leave, but leave clean. Purify yourselves
in the process of worship, carrying the holy vessels of God.
But you don't have to be in a hurry.
You're not running from anybody!
God is leading you out of here,
and the God of Israel is also your rear guard.

Also, the title on Seth Barnes blog for the day was "Have the Hard Conversation now" and the title on My Utmost for His Highest devotional for the day was "Do It Now." NO JOKE. I got the idea that God was moving me through this more quickly than I was comfortable with.God quieted me. He let me know that none of this was out of His control. He wasn't surprised by any of it. He wasn't rushing around trying to fix it. I calmed down and let Him walk me through it.

In my first God's plan post. I said that God gave me a story and He wants me to tell it, but He wants all the glory. Remember I said I had a plan...and it involved a lot of people helping me get through this. He said "no" I will get you through this and He did. I was brought to a place, although surrounded by people, where I was totally alone in this. I knew I was going to confront my mom and I thought I knew what it was going to look like but again He said "no". At Uplift we stay in the college dorms. There are two rooms connected by a bathroom. Miraculously I got two rooms with a bathroom all to myself. God knew I would need a place to be completely alone. He knew at times I would need solitude. Uplift is filled with classes all day long. As an adult chaperon you can go to these classes, but you can also hang back if you need to. At the beginning of the session I had gone to some of the classes and LOVED them. On Monday I had planned out what classes I was going to go to. I never made it. God started stirring me up inside...I wasn't comfortable with anything but being alone. A lot of journaling thoughts came to my head, and I escaped to my room to write them down. I wrote and prayed and cried.

This is already to long. I have learned some things about blogging etiquette since starting.

I will write more tomorrow.

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